Ewe-A-Day - Whispering Pines Harriet

Ahh, Harriet, our lovely fawn smirslet katmoget ewe out of Canterbury and Cordovan. She was our bottle lamb from this year and has been fed like a pig. She even has a little pig nose. She is my second favorite ewe lamb from this year, although I don't know how lived, to be honest. She was nearly dead when she was born and I had to revive her. Then it was touch and go for a week. She was born very small, but has responded well. Of course, I left her on the bottle until October in an attempt to get every pound of growth on her that I could. As of two weeks ago, she was at 42 pounds, which is pretty good given her refined build. She'll never be 80 pounds, which is something I like. It's possible that all that nutrition impacted her fleece numbers, but they are still pretty respectable. I will be interested to see how her fleece grows this winter. It's been fairly warm this year so far compared to the last two winters. So far, the ewes have been able to convert all of their feed into body weight, but it's not clear to me how temperature impacts fleece growth. I know nutrition impacts fiber diameter, so if warmer temperatures might lead to higher micron results with less competition with the cold.

Harriet's fall fleece test was: 20.2/4.5/22.5/8.1/7.2/19.9. Very good average, but a little higher standard deviation like most of the lambs this year. As I said, I'll be very curious about the spring test on a full fleece.